THE NEW YOR.KER. and returned to the meeting. Upon looking at my book, Cohen announced stentoriously that I would not be con- tinuing with the course the next se- mester. This was a potential disaster-not only for my four-year plan but for my whole program of graduate study. It was at this point that I had one of those strokes of good fortune that can decide one's future. I had got to know Gerald Holton reasonably well during my undergraduate years. Like myself, he was a disciple of Philipp Frank, whom we always referred to privately as "Uncle Philipp." He had taken his doctorate with Percy Bridgman, and was doing experimental work on the physics of high pressures. But he was also a historian of science, with an interest in the philosophy of science. He was, in some degree, a model for what I thought I would like to do. Furthermore, he was sharing the teaching responsibilities in another Natural Sciences course-Natural Sci- ences 2, which was a more serious version of the sort of elementary course that Cohen was teaching. It attracted people with some scientific orientation who were not science ma- jors. The course was run by Edwin C. Kemble, a theoretical physicist who in the nineteen-twenties became one of the first American physicists trained in the then new quantum physics. I al- ways thought of Mr. Kemble as "old Mr. Kemble," although in 1953 he was just sixty-four. He seemed very ancient. (He died in 1984, at the age of ninety-five.) Mr. Kemble had a gravelly voice. He was slow of speech and looked like aNew England sea captain. He did not do things lightly or hastily. I think it was Holton who told me that Mr. Kemble was looking for a new section man. I went at once to see him. It was clear that Professor Kemble had heard of my difficulties with Co- hen and had decided that I might be some kind of flake. After our inter- view, he went around to my fellow graduate students to see if I was con- sidered a serious person. The reports were, apparently, favorable, and I was hired provisionally, with the clear un- derstanding that if I did not take my responsibilities to heart I would be let go. Fair enough. That now left the summer at the Harvard Cyclotron. The Harvard Cyclotron was the first particle accelerator I ever saw. As these machines go, it was relatively small, having been completed in 1948. I twas situated in a brick building not far from the Yard. I knew nothing about how such machines were run, so I was in no position to realize just how simple the operation of this one was. It was run mainly by graduate students and a few postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. It was an idea] teaching tool, because the graduate students could get their hands on everything; the big machines now have an entire corps of engineers who actually run them, and the physicists confine them- selves to planning experiments and an- alyzing the data recorded by com- puters. At the cyclotron, we did every- thing. In fact, we did so much of everything that I really had no time to understand what it was that we were doing . We piled up the lead bricks that were used for shielding, and some- times we actually sewed together by hand the pieces of material that were to be used for targets. The cyclotron circulated protons at moderate ener- gies, and these impinged on the targets we sewed. Some years later, I finally grasped the point of what we were doing. The protons were allowed to pick up a neutron on passing through a nucleus, thus forming my beloved deuteron. This was a process known as deuteron pickup. To me, it was piling lead bricks and sewing targets. Whatever it was, the summer passed both without incident and without my learning much about experimental nu- clear physics, the subject of my coming oral examination. The year 1953-54 was, for me, a very complicated one. I was still deter- mined to get out in not more than four years. SInce I had already spent two with the Mathematics Department, that left two. The most obvious thing, I suppose, would have been for me to try to work with Schwinger. But every Wednesday afternoon there was a line of graduate students outside his office, each of them hoping to get a few minutes of his time. I simply did not see how, given my background, I was ---= ... EPICERcf la ). . 0 . ',".' .: ......,. - '-', .... o -' -> ' II- '"" ... - ........ .,.. ñr;> -"\,.. .,-........ ...... L ... ...... ., ð C"""'"\_.......-"""")-..- ,.. _ "" c"" ... r .... -..... Ai 61 going to be able to work on a thesis problem without more help than that -assuming that Schwinger would take me on in the first place. There were, however, some junior faculty members who did not have any stu- dents and who were closer to my age than Schwinger was, and seemed quite willing to have students. In particular, there was Abraham Klein, who was a Harvard Junior Fellow, a highly re- garded postdoctoral fellowship-he is now on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He was very energet- ic, and full of ideas for calculations, so I signed up with him to do a thesis. He had a straightforward-sounding problem involving the electromag- netic properties of the deuteron. At that time, there were several compet- ing models of the nuclear force-the force that binds the nucleus together -and each of these models could be tested by trying it out on the deuteron. Klein was interested in one of the models, and he proposed that we try it out on the deuteron's electromagnetic properties. Thus I was launched on a thesis. Meanwhile, there was the oral ex- amination to worry about. That is simply discussed. I failed it. My failure was of a very particular kind. I was asked a number of questions that someone with a modest grasp of phys- ics would have answered very simply. I had no grasp of physics, so insofar as I could I answered the questions in a roundabout mathematical way, pro- voking much mirth among the exam- iners. A less flexible institution might have simply flunked me out, and that would have been that. Instead, I was told that if I took a course in experi- mental physics the following spring and passed it that would satisfy the requirement. I agreed. Then an exper- imental physicist named Kenneth Bainbridge, who had played a key role at Los Alamos during the war and had recently become the chairman of the department, suggested that I take a reading course with Wendell Furry in the theory of electromagnetic radia- tion. He told me that Furry had been one of Oppenheimer's students and that I could learn a great deal from him. I signed up with Furry. Wendell Furry, as I have noted, had been the professor in the freshman physics course I took as a junior. It is, I think, important for this sequel to give some idea of Furry's appearance. He was a solidly built man with a large stomach that seemed to spillover his pants. He looked, and talked, like